A fun diversion from work

I'm a bit snowed under with last minute magazine edits at present. It's driving me a little crazy, not how I like to spend a Saturday at all!


So for a bit of fun I thought I'd include a Youtube video giving some basics of our favourite sport, cricket.


Here's a good 4 minute overview. Brought to you by Kansas Cricket association (with an English accent).

Here's a more lighthearted explanation of fielding terms. You get the idea that the game is very complex.

Here an American comedian gives an explanation of cricket:

And this is a slightly tongue-in-cheek video describing some of the terminology for cricket.

Enjoy!

Four interesting stories in the Japanese news

I've read some interesting Japanese stories this week, so I thought I'd share them with you (don't worry, they're in English). You may have seen them, I often don't know what makes it into international news.


Firstly, a man on the police's most wanted list gave himself up on New Year's Eve, only minutes before the new year. The funny thing about the story is that he tried several times to do it, one policeman he went to refused to believe his story and sent him to another police box (yes, that is what they are called, and rightly so, they are tiny, local police stations) down the road. He was a part of that cult that gas bombed Tokyo's subway nearly 17 years ago. A very serious offence, but who would guess that he would give himself up? Here's the story. His reason for giving himself up was that the March 11 disaster: “Many senseless scenes from the massive earthquake in the Tohoku region made me question my own situation. I wanted to turn myself in by the end of 2011."


A second story is about a tuna fish. The story is here. A 269kg tuna fish caught in Japan's waters sold for the record price of US$736,700. Making it the world's most expensive tuna. The story is particularly noteworthy, because a sushi chain in Japan bought it, in the previous couple of years it has gone overseas. I don't fully understand the "it" in this, but nevertheless, the owner of the restaurant chain said, “Rather than having it taken away overseas, I wish for Japanese people to eat good tuna together. Despite the March 11 earthquake and the sluggish economy I want to lift up Japan’s spirits urging people to work hard together.”


Third story: no free flights to Japan. It was a story in October that Japan's tourist agency floated an idea that they would offer 10,000 free flights to boost flagging tourist interest in the  country. Unfortunately that wasn't approved in the budget. Full story here.


The fourth story also involved money and reveals a Japanese tradition that you might not know about. A bit like Black Friday sales (day after Thanksgiving in the US) and Boxing Day sales in Australia, they have New Year shopping here. But the big thing are bags. Like lucky-dip bags crossed with show bags. You don't know exactly what is in them, but they are supposed to be a great bargain. Here is a story that opened my eyes as to how extravagant these "bags" can be. Here are the last two paragraphs of that story:

At Seibu Ikebukuro department store in Tokyo's Toshima Ward, about 20,000 shoppers formed a line. Among the top selling lucky bags at the store was one with candy and other items, which sold for 1,000 to 3,000 yen.

Hankyu Men's Tokyo in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, a menswear store, offered a Mercedes-Benz sports car lucky bag, along with the privilege to drive the car on a racetrack, for 24.9 million yen. About 10 people applied for the special lucky bag, which was available to just one person.

20,000 people in a line! Us, being the great shoppers that we are NOT, have never tried out this particularly Japanese tradition. It could be a long time before we do.

Numbers 2 and 3 on my to-do list are challenging

Now that I suddenly have all this time again (kids back at school), I have this list that I'm working through. Yesterday I barely got past "monthly prayer/newsletter". Today I've moved onto number two and three, which are both things I've also been finding hard to get much momentum on. Perhaps my 2 1/2 weeks of little computer work has refreshed my resolve to tackle those harder projects.

Number two on the list is centred around this gorgeous book. I have a Japanese colleague who is translating this into Japanese for the girls in her church. She is so enthusiastic about the book, every time I see her she raves about the project. 


The reason she directs this at me is that a few months ago I volunteered to help her get her work published legally. She's just using it for her local ministry at present, which is quite legal, but it would be great to see this more widely available as there are very few devotional resources in Japanese for girls 8-12. 


Little did I know what I was getting myself into! First I emailed the author, who was very happy to give her permission, but she didn't own the international copyright. So I went on to email the publisher in South Africa who owns that. They've agreed and sent us a contract and require money! So now I've moved on to try to persuade a Japanese publisher to take on the project (and pay the money). Publishing books is very complicated and expensive. Legally I get out of my depth pretty quickly. Nonetheless now I'm pulling together a proposal, trying to sell this project to the publisher. I never expected to be doing something like this.


But, hopefully I can persuade someone to take on this project and my responsibility for it will finish. But somehow, I think that there might be more of these in the future . . . my colleague has dipped her toe into translation and is enjoying it. She keeps finding more and more books that she'd love to see in Japanese. We English speakers are so spoiled with so many resources in our heart language. 


Number three on my list is also a difficult, but much larger, less glamorous project. It is the Style Guide for the magazine that I edit. I also cannot believe that I'm doing this. Delving into whether commas should go before or after inverted commas/quotation marks. Researching American English and Commonwealth English. Discerning differences in vocabulary, deciding standards for referencing etc. 


It really isn't my scene, but once it is done it will help us get our editing done faster. Instead of pondering each individual situation, we can look it up in our Style Guide and know straight away what to do.


At the same time I'm following the cricket. After many lackluster matches, finally Australia is producing an amazing, record breaking performance. I won't bore you non cricket fans with the details, but it is making it hard to concentrate on these other two projects (not that it takes much to distract me from them).

I don't know where this photo has disappeared to...

But something that is helping me along is this muesli bar. I had to take a photo before I ripped into it. I haven't had the pleasure of eating an Australian muesli bar for about 18 months. Wow, it tasted good!

Winners of the Holiday Competition

And the winners of the Holiday Competition are:


-J 
Footprints (Janet) (for your holding hands story)
Helen
KarenKTeachCamb


Congratulations! Thanks for entering my first ever competition. And thank you for sharing your Christmas memories (good and bad) with us all.


I think I am Facebook friends with all of you. Can you all send me your snail mail address so I can get this Jan-Feb booklet of meditations to you before the month is too far gone?

A family-like gathering

Today we spent time with our "family" in Japan. These are other missionaries in our mission here. Like an extended family there are many we don't know well and others we know quite well. But most of all we share the experience of living in a foreign land as well as the same reason and passion for being here. All these similarities bring us together. We're even like a family in the sense of not all getting together all that often. In fact some of the the school-age kids only see each other once or twice a year.

Today, instead of our regular adult-focused prayer meeting, we had a family friendly gathering. One of our mums did an activity with the kids that was beaut. Turning a fun activity (competitive ball throwing into a basket) into a lesson to learn (to be careful about not letting bad thoughts into our heads). At the end, our field director prayed with and for the kids. I love this photo.

After a guided time of prayer, sharing of points of testimony or thankfulness, and then a fun game together; we enjoyed lunch and a casual time of just "hanging" together. It was low stress and enjoyable. Our boys played ping pong/table tennis and board games with the other kids, I chatted with people I haven't spent much time with before. I got a refill of my "conversation-with-women" tank (it's been a "quiet" holiday, but that means that I've had little conversation with any other women, and I was feeling a little desperate). Although it took us an hour to drive there and and hour and a half to drive home, it was a well spent day. Refreshing in fact.

Sometimes people wonder how we cope without family around us. Well actually in some ways we find ourselves with more in common with these folk from all over the world than with our own families. Missionaries can have challenging relationships with family because it can be hard for family members to understand why we're living overseas, why we're doing this strange thing "for God". This is especially if they are unbelievers, but let's face it, many Christians feel uncomfortable with missionaries too, imagine being related to one! When missionaries go home the experiences we have had overseas are hard for anyone who's never been out of the country to understand. It is even hard for those who've taken an overseas trip, but never lived overseas to understand. It is also hard for family to understand that the missionaries have changed as a result of their time away from their home country. How the missionaries have changed can be a source of mystery and even frustration or annoyance. 

So to gather with a group of other missionaries, who understand what it is like to live overseas, to struggle with the language and culture, and who have a similar passion to reach the Japanese, is an encouraging time. 

Different to a real family gathering because we haven't got blood or nationality or childhood memories in common. However there is a bond between missionaries that is difficult to describe. It is enough to describe it as family-like.

Books we've recently read to our kids

It is no secret that our family enjoys reading. Both David and I and we're managing to pass that on to our kids. Our lives changed significantly once our eldest child learnt to read. Up till then (about 6) he'd driven us crazy with his need to move and do stuff. Once he learned to read we could have periods of peace and a rest from seeking things to keep him busy. It is still true, we have peace when he's reading, but it can be challenging if he doesn't have a book on the go. And that isn't easy, because he reads like the wind. His brothers are picking up the habit too, they aren't quite as voracious readers as their brother (yet), but still they love books. 


Over the last couple of years I've made a habit of reading to them while they finish their evening meal. I'm a pretty speedy eater and so is our oldest son, so I read while the other two finish their meal. It just helps keep peace and keeps our family together at the table for a little bit longer.


Here's a couple of books we've enjoyed recently as a family.

Little Pilgrim's Progress. Brilliant adaptation of John Bunyan's classic. I'm not sure if I read this version or another adapted version as an 11 or 12 year old, but I enjoyed the story then and we all enjoyed it over this last month. The boys were always pleading for more. Chapters are only two or three pages long, so it is a perfect book for reading aloud.

This is a totally different kind of book. But it is another old favourite. We discovered this picture book a few years ago. Great illustrations, funny story that is very appealing to boys. If it is in your local library, go and check it out. Hilarious. You've never met a librarian like Lil!

Here are a couple of other times I've mentioned books I've read to the boys after dinner: here and here.

What books have you enjoyed reading to your kids?

Looking forward to 2012

This afternoon while I was on the bed reading I heard some suspicious creaks in the house. I thought, Could be the wind, could be a tiny earthquake... After a short bit the creaks turned into groans and soon the whole house was jiggling and the intensity of the jiggles was increasing. The light overhead swayed on its electrical chord and I'm lying in bed thinking, How much bigger is this going to get?...and...how much longer is this going to go on for? For that is exactly how the big earthquake in March started. Slowly and quietly it crept up upon us, gradually increasing in intensity, and then it shook for quite a while. Some earthquakes start with a jolt and you have no time to react, quite different.


This afternoon it didn't get big enough to knock anything over nor to get me out of bed (but we've felt a lot of earthquakes now, so not much gets me out of bed). But it was a timely reminder that no matter what I plan or think might happen in the next 12 months, I really don't have much control over what actually does happen. No where near as much control as I'd like to think I have. We experienced too many unexpecteds in 2011 to believe that. 


However, that doesn't deter me from planning or looking forward to things. But, I do think it is best to add, "Lord willing" to all the below.


Looking forward to 2012, here are some things that I'd like to happen (or are planned for) this year for me/us:


• We visit Australia in July.
• Motorhome driving holiday to Uluru while in Australia.
• Increased professionalism of Japan Harvest (the magazine I'm an editor of) and increased responsibility for me there. (here I add Colossians 3:23-24 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.")
• More camping trips.
• At least one women's retreat and one mission conference.
• Another skiing trip with me to try out skiing next winter (hopefully I'll be injury-free) this time next year.
• Keep blogging daily.
• Keep going to the gym.
• My eldest child turns 13.


I guess I should have a writing goal here...how about try to get 12 articles published in magazines? That shouldn't be too out of reach, this year I had at least that many published, but that includes several in the magazines of which I am an editor, is that cheating? How about two articles in magazines in which I've never been published before, that is more challenging.

And here I need to add the verse that went out with our New Year cards today (like Christmas cards, but in Japan, people send out cards at New Year to greet friends, acquaintances, business associates etc. and they get delivered on New Year's morning):

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

So I have hope. Even though 2011 held many things I didn't plan or want. It held pain and sorrow. It contained things that I regret. Even though these things happened, I still have hope. I still have a future that God has planned, and that is much better than anything I've planned.


Resting in him.




PS Don't forget the competition I have running. I've only had three entries and there are four prizes up for grabs. All you have to do is share a childhood memory of Christmas/New Year. Check this link for the details. You only have two days left to enter.